OUR SOUTHERN PEAKS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2206, 11 June 1896, Page 3 (Supplement)

OUR SOUTHERN PEAKS.

LECTURE BY MR MALCOLM ROSS.

This was the title of a lecture delivered by Mr Malcolm Ross in the Choral Hall last week. The object of the lecture was the raising of funds for the Knox Church Young Women's Society with a view to procuring warm clothing for the very poor children at the north end of the city daring the winter months, and as some 500 people filled the hall a substantial sum should be realised. The lecturer began by reference to the sport of mountaineering. The sporb of mountaineering, he said, is one about which the general public— at all events in the colonies — seems to have rather vague ideas. Generally it is supposed to be mere gymnastics. The great Ruskin compared mountaineers to swarmers of greased poles, but that was no doubi when he was a young man at the zenith of his cocksuredaess and accustomed to dogmatise about things he had no real knowledge of. But whatever was the cause of Buskin's sneer, the fact remains that mountaineers number amongst their ranks some of the brightest and best intellects of the age, and though most climbers are not slow to recognise the great genius of Raskin, they agree to differ with him on this poinc. It h true that the sojourner in valleys c»n get much enjoyment from mountain scenery, but it is only to the climber that its glories are revealed in all their varied and most magnificent splendour. It is natural to suppose that there is more to be seen from the hills than from the valleys. As Mr Douglas Freshfield has well said : " Nothing that is mountainous is alien to us ; we are addicted to all high places, wherever m»n has not forked out Nature. No doubt we find a particular fascination in the greatest and boldest inequalities of the earth's surface and the strange scenery of the ice and snow world ; but we are attracted by any inequality, so long as it has not a railroad statiou or a restaurant on the top of it." But even the mere gymnastics of mountaineering serves a purpose, and it would not be a good thing if all climbing were easy. Indeed the 'difficulties that beset the climber are to be welcomed if for no other reason than that they breed the race of guides. A day on a mountain with a man like Zurbriggen is as good tor the soul as a day with a philosopher — or at all events with some of our modern ones. It is strange how little the average New Zealander knows of the beauty and graudeur of his own country. His great idea it' he is in the country seems to be to get into the town, and if he is already iv the town to stop there. The young men of the cities see too little of the grandeur of Nature. The fleeting vanities of the cricket or tbe football field keep them away from tbe study of it till well into manhood, and it is a little sad to find so many examples of young men who, while they are able to quote you tUe latest odds on the New Zealand Cup, or trace the pedigree of the winner back to some equine Adam, are utterly incapable of enjoying cue beauties of an autumn sunset, and could no more till you the geology or history of tbeir own district than could ' the man in the moon ! Cricket and footbill,' and even horse-raciug, are no doubt all very well iv their way, but it tieems to me that there is a ' danger of our overdoing our zeal in these directions, so, by way of a corrective, I would put in a plea for mountaineering — for tha enjoyment of the glorious scenery of lake and mountain, bill aud < stream, for a sport that takes us away from the towns into fairer j regions where we can breathe God's air as it comes to us pure and fresh over the tops of a hundred hills. lam sometimes amused to see yonng New Zealand with his nose glued to his wheel like some, monstrosity of a modern Ixion .flying through the most beautiful country scunes •at the rate of 20 miles . an hour, with the sole object of lowering some record from Blankton to Little Pedlingtou, only for some other man with more muscle or a better machine to come , after him and " break " it. No doubt it is a .good thing for a country to have athletes, and it may be a little flittering to our vanity to read .in the newspapers some fine morning that Flack, of Victoria, has come out top at Olympia, and that the records of Lad as and all his tribe have been eclipsed ; but I think there is a danger of our youth spending a little too much of tbeir leisure iv the development of mere muscle. It would be a good thing for this colony, and colonists would have more pride ia it, if they could see a little more of it, even at the cost of a week or two from tbe desk, or the sacrifice of an occasional cricket or football match. Mountaineering gives an opportunity of seeing all that is grandest aud most beautiful in the physical aspect of a country, and that it doss not lequire any very extraordinary muscular powers may be judged from a casual glance at the lecturer. And here let me tell you rather a good story.albeit it tells rather against myself. I kuow that in some of tbe wilds of Otigo where 1 have not penetrated it is generally supposed that I am a wild Highlandman with kilts and a long red beard, and on some occasions I have been confounded with my friend and schoolfellow Donald Ross, who relinquished the trammels of the teaching profession for the freer life of a Government guide at Te Anau. On the occasion I refer to, my brother Kenneth had just arrived at the accommodation house iv the Clinton Valley after a very rough trip from Milford Sound, and was having tea in the company of some strangers who had come up the same evening. Conversation turned on the delights and difficulties of a trip to Milford, and someone asked if Malcolm Ross was the overland guide, to which a well-known Government official present replied, "Oh, no, lie's only a weed of an ink-slinger ! " There was au awtul silence amongst those of the guests who knew that the answerer of the question was sifcj ting immediately opposite to my brother, broken at length by the latter's chuckle and a casual remark to his chum farther down the table to " hand the sugar." But the true mountaineer, continued Mr Ross, is not a mere man of muscle. He is the man who loves the mountains not so much for the climbing of them as for their own sake, and liis highest object as a climber, above everything that can be expressed in mountaineering jargon, is, in the words of Professor Ramsay, •'to promote a love — an admiring, reverent, sympathetic love — of the hills, and to promote a knowledge of everything, be it history or poetry, geology or tradition, which tends to a more perfect appreciation of them, and of the effect which through all generations they have exercised upon the spirit and life of man." The spirit which should pervade the mountaineer is the spirit of Nature. He should carry eyes which find beauty in every natural object — a field, a tree, a blade of dew-laden grass dancing in the morning sun, in tbe Notes of birds And rippling murmurs in the soft green haughs, The lowly flower, the grace of slender birch ; In pale hill violet trusted to the winds ; In last brief hum of solitary bee, By moorland burn on late September noon That dies upon the fading heat'ier bloom.

It is in this spirit that I would ask you to accompany me on a journey through the Alps to-night. I recently read a very charming book entitled •• The Alps fram End to End," by Sir Martin Conway, the president of the Au'hors' Society and editor of the Alpine Journal, and this book has suggested the plan of my lecture — if it may be dignified by such an important title. But I warn you that you must not expect any such interesting descriptions as Conway gives, no tales of old Italian monasteries, no historic legends of tbevalleys, no*; even the analysis of a panoratric view, which he suggests should be synthetically determined, but simply a plain tale from the hills, with as good a description as a limited vocabulary will enable me to give you, and as excellent a presentment of the reality as photographic means will permit. Let me then take you to a pretty beech-fringed stream at tbe head of Milford Sound, where our journey begins. _ From this point the lecturer took his audience with him on a series of expeditions in the Alps, from Milford Sound to Mount Cook, describing the ascents of Mount Tutoko, the three highest peaks of the Remarkable^, Mount Earnslaw, De la Beche, &0.. his remarks being illustrated by a large number of very beautiful limelight views made by himself from photographs which he aDd his climbing companions bad taken above and below the enow line. These views were such as to call forth the frequent and hearty applause of the audience. The night which the lecturer, in company with his brother and Mr W. J. P. Hodgkine, spent on the slopes of Tutoko was graphically described ; also the storm experienced at the Mount Cook bivouac, 75> Oft above Gee level, in December 1895. Referring to thi* experience, Mr Ross said : — "Dixon, Kenneth, and I arrived there and settled down in our alpine tent one fine night preparatory to attempting the ascent of Mount Cook. Presently the wind began to sigh in the rocks, and in an hour a gale was raging around our airy bivouac. The tent threatened to be bl<>wn clean away, so we lowered it and lay all night in our sleeping bags nnder its flapping folds. In the morning it was snowing, and all the next day the storm raged. Towards evening the wind moderated a little and we were able to re-erect the tent. The rain which came later formed pools on the floor of the tent, and after baling out for some time we gave up the task and lay in the water. Presently began the thuudtr and lightning, and by midnight the storm was at its height. The thunder shook the ridge with every crash. The reports were simultaneous with the lightning which played about the crags close to us with extraordinary brilliancy. The thunder came in short reports like the firing of cannon, and was echoed and re-echoed from the adjacent crags across the Hochstetter Icefall. It was forcibly demonstrated that the rolling sound of thunder is really not the thunder itself, but simply the echoes. We did not know when we should be able to descend, but we kept up our spirits, sang songs, and told stories, and towards morning even got a few winks of sleep. When da) light at last came through the snowy canopy that covered our tent, two of the party awoke to find the third sitting up with his back against the end of the tent, philosophically smoking his pipe and endeavouring to barricade a youDg avalanche that threatened to overwhelm our habitation. Peering out into the grey dawn, we saw around and below us a cauldron of swirliog mist and snow, but the gale had moderated somewhat, and we decided to descend." After showing a large number of very fine views of tbe Mount Cook alpine district, the lecturer concluded as follows : — " I am afraid I may have dealt overmuch with the discomforts of climbing. In the mountains of a new country they are necessarily greater than in alps where the comfortable club-house reaches almost as high as Mont Blanc, but for my part I would a thousand times prefer the hardships of pioneering to the luxuries of old-established routes, where the climber is conveyed to the top of a mountain by professional guides, who are able to lie abed and picture every step of the way. I would not have missed our nieht out on Tutoko or the storm at the Mount Cook bivouac for anything. It is a valuable experience to know what it is to be without a meal for two days, or to experience the dtlighfc of satisfying, with plain wholesome food, appetites that have been sharper ed by healthy exeicise and the keen mountain air. lam sure that no French ragout could ,taste half so sweet as the delectable stews made by my wife in an old tin billy at the De la Beche Bivouac, where, in the midst of the eternal snows, and within sight and sound of the thundering avalancbe, with Botanist Gibbs, Wilson, ' of Glasgow,' and one or two other choice companions, we passed with BODg and story the dying hours of '92, and saw the new year in. Such reminiscences are treasured in the storehouse of memory by the mountaineer. In the flicker of the winter firelight, amid the platitudes of the plains, when perchance some musical genius is playing a Beethoven symphony to the general conversation, the mountaineer will see the giant peaks risiDg into cloudland in jagged pinnacles, like some Cyclopean saw, or in snowy domes with gentle undulations softly rounded as the breasts of Aphrodite. Visions of storm and shine will flit before him, of brave deeds and generous actions, and trusty friends who can be depended upon in fair weather or foul. These and a hundred other delightful visions he will conjure up, and mayhap thiok a little sadly of the time when he will begin to feel ' a suspicion of weakness in the back tendons, and the che&t will be getting a little lower down.' "And now lam at the end of my contract. I have shown you views such as th« climber glories in ; I have given you some idea of the light and shade of mountaineering : the cheery camp fire gleaming on the fringes of the pathless forest, with kakapo or kea frizzling at the end of a spit ; the cold belated bivouac on some turretted ridge above the snow line ; the careless fun and frolic on some easy, sun-bathed ridge, where ever and anon the jodelling of the party wakes the slumbering echoes ; the stormiDg of the long couloir where every niche of the way has to be fought for— where the clink ! clink ! clink ! of the leader's axe in the flinty ice and the swish ! swish ! swish ! of the shattered fragments adown the frozen slope are the only sounds heard. Each and all may come to the mountaineer in the conquering of his peak. It is with such judicious blending of the allegro and pensoroso that he proceeds. He glories in the one as in the other, and is able to come back endowed afresh with energy of brain and muscle, and a philosophic determination to take the ups and downs of life as Providence decrees." Though the lecture lasted nearly two hours, Mr Ross succeeded in rivetting the attention of his audience with his interesting desoriptiou of the Southern Alps and of his climbs among them, and was frequently applauded. The views proved to be very fine, the snow scenes coming out beautifully clear and bright. At the conclusion of the lecture the Rev. W. Hewitson moved a vote of thanks to all those who had assisted in connection with the entertainment, and briefly referred to the pleasure he had hadinlisteniDg to Mr Ross's very modesfc description of his

adventures. For his own part he said his feelings were during the course of the lecture divided in admiration of the wonderful scenes thrown on the screen and the courage of Mr Ross and his companions displayed in the various expeditions they had undertaken. The optical lantern used during tbe evening was worked by Mr R. C. Jones, of the Union Company, in capital style.